


The Summer of Breaking Bones

by sophieexists



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, M/M, Richie centric, and falling in love and all that shit, bev and eddie!!!! bffs!!!!, but its a BIG squint, friendship ! love ! romance ! drama !, kinda sad? i guess? at some points?, lots of run on sentences, no beta we die like men, oscar wilde r u proud?, rich and bev!!!! adorable besties, stan and richie!!! bffs, stenbrough if u squint?, stozier but like FRIENDSHIP, vignettes of them growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 05:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21113522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophieexists/pseuds/sophieexists
Summary: “You should bring your mom, so she won’t miss me too much,” Richie says, and Eddie hugs him so tight he hopes his ribs cave in.“I’m gonna kill you if you don’t call,” Eddie says into his neck, and Richie rubs his back, nodding. He thinks about the Cure concert and the hammock and playing truth or dare two weeks ago. He thinks of promising that he won’t forget at 14, he thinks about Stan and Mike and Bill and Ben and Bev, about the demon vomit on Eddie’s red t-shirt and the fight with Bill that summer. He thinks of the clown and the quarry and he hears Bev, sure as ever, of course, Stan, don’t be so scared. He thinks of the missing poster with his face on it, about Bowers, about the kissing bridge. His mind plays memories like a projector, click, the photo booth, click, the ritual, click, “do you want one from me, too, Mrs. K?”





	The Summer of Breaking Bones

**Author's Note:**

> uh trigger warnings for basically everything in the movies/books, just in case!!!!

They make it out relatively unscathed; Eddie’s arm is broken and Stan gets this perpetual, sad look in his eyes, but Richie guesses they all do. Ben and Bev look at each other nicely, but they look bittersweet, and Bill and his knobby knees and tired eyes grows up like Georgie didn't. Mike stays in the library more and more until he forgets to eat for a day and a half.

They fill up the clubhouse, big and bigger, heads brushing the ceiling and cracking voices and sharp elbows.

  
They all grow up that summer.

  
The day Stan asks if they’ll all be friends after this, after Derry, after they all grow up and forget and stop being able to see the blood on the walls, Richie’s throat tightens with panic. He looks over at Eddie, instinctively, and sees Eddie looking back, big brown eyes filled with the same fear Richie felt crawling up in his ribs. They’re on top of each other in the hammock, kicking and jabbing and ignoring the flares in their guts.

  
Eddie puts a hand on his leg, and they both try to let themselves believe it when Bev says, always sure and strong, _of course, Stan, don’t be so scared. _

Stan gets the sad look in his eyes again.

He can’t look at the kissing bridge anymore.

  
He can only see the burning, angry, _R + E,_ that he carved, and he can only imagine what Bowers would do if he saw it.

  
Except he’s pushed down a well, and his cousin doesn’t look at Richie anymore, and Street Fighter suddenly becomes dirty and wrong. His skin itches like he's trying to burst out of it. 

He lets himself think the things he’s scared of, because there’s no fixing him. He lets himself think about Eddie’s hair and his lips and his shorts. He lets himself be dirty. There’s no point in trying to be clean anymore, not since he wakes up thinking he smells the sewer and the blood and the black vomit on Eddie’s face.

  
He thinks of the lovers on Eddie’s cast and he thinks about kissing him and he thinks about math class and, abstractly, growing up and forgetting, which makes his chest contracts and his ribs crumble. _Ha_, he thinks, _the stupid clown couldn't turn into the fear of growing up, bitch_. 

  
He’s always been scared.

They get to a point where they can joke about it, where Eddie doesn’t need his inhaler when someone mentions clowns, where Bill can look at yellow raincoats again. It takes a bit, but they get there.

  
They still have nightmares.

  
Some nights, he climbs up to Eddie’s window (he leaves it unlocked now) and stares at his ceiling and tries to think of what Eddie would do if he started to hold him.  
Probably shove him off.

  
They wake up in a tangle of bony joints and arms and legs and they don’t ever talk about it in the morning.

Bev has to move away.

  
Richie yo-yos with her and hugs her way too tight and _totally __doesn’t_ cry, and she hugs him back and ruffles his hair and promises to call.

  
“Oh, Bevvie, what will your swains do without you,” he coos, into her hair, and he can feel her laugh.

  
“Don’t miss me too much,” she whispers. “I’ll call every day.”

  
“You fucking better, Molly Ringwald,” he says, and he ignores the way his throat hurts when he talks, he ignores _do you think we’ll be friends, when we’re older_? echoing in his head, he ignores the fact that he’s not so sure she’ll call. “I’m going to come with you. I can fit in your trunk. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

  
“We’ll pack you in a suitcase.”

  
“Each loser in a different bag.”

  
“Fuck,” she says, in lieu of a reply, and hugs him a little harder. He kisses the top of her head.

  
Her and Ben look at each other in that intense, bittersweet way again, and Eddie and her cry, and Bill holds her hands and tells her he’ll _muh muh miss her_. Mike kisses her on the cheek and Stan ruffles her hair and she says _send me pictures of your favorite birds, Stanny_. She gets in the car, turns to them out of the window, and Richie wants to make her come back, just for a second. He hopes she forgot something. Eddie grips his arm, hard, and sniffs beside him. Richie wraps a loose arm around his shoulders and they watch her drive away.  
The clubhouse is empty without her.

They have a movie night, at Mike’s, where they call Bev and pass around the phone. Eddie can barely talk, he’s trying not to cry, and he chokes out a "come back, asshole, I love you", and he passes it to Richie, head on his shoulder.

  
She says something, but Richie doesn’t catch it, because he’s missed the sound of her voice, and she sounds happier now, she does, and she must catch the silence on the other line and says, “oh, the conversations we have,” and he smiles so hard she must hear it through the receiver.

  
“Sorry, sorry, caught a look of Eddie’s mom’s ass,” he says, and Eddie hits him. He hears Bev laugh, light and unafraid and his chest squeezes. 

  
“How can you _not_ catch a look of it?”

  
He snorts, and says, “I’m gonna have to go to Portland and punch you for making fun of my woman,” and she says, “you’re too scrawny to do any real good,” and his chest hurts when he has to pass the phone to Mike.

  
They watch Rebel Without a Cause and he catches Eddie looking over at him, a cute, frustrated look on his face. They look at each other, for a long, nice second, and Eddie must come to some conclusion during that because he grabs Richie’s hand so hard he thinks his fingers must be breaking. He welcomes it, holds back just as tight, and he catches Ben looking at them with a tired, happy look on his face.

  
Bill falls asleep first, on the old recliner, and then Eddie and then Ben and then Mike, until it’s just Stan and him and Eddie’s relaxed hand in his.

  
Stan acts older than he’s supposed to be, most of the time, like he’s aged faster than them. They all are supposed to be a little more innocent, Richie guesses, a little more naive, but Stan looks tired and sad and like a man who’s lost his wife. Some slapstick comedy drones on behind them, and Stan whispers, “I don’t know if I want to forget.”

  
He thinks of Stan’s bar mitzvah, how he said, “I’m a loser, and I always fucking will be,” and how the microphone cord was pulled taught behind him. He thinks of how fucking brave Stan is, and how he loves birds, and is struck with this weird, coiled up feeling in his stomach, and he wants to cry. He wants to memorize every single moment with the Losers, and he thinks, “if I try hard enough, I can remember this when I’m old,” and wonders if that’s enough to make it come true.

  
“Me neither,” Richie says, instead.

  
“It’d be easier to forget.”

  
“I never wanna forget you guys, though.”

  
“That makes me want to die,” Stan says, soft and real. He wonders what they’ll be like as adults, if Stan will ever have a weight lifted from his shoulders. “Forgetting you guys.”  
“Bev doesn’t call me, unless I call her.”

  
“She’s probably just busy,” Stan says, but they both know that’s not it.

  
“What if you,” it’s suddenly hard to get the words out, and he thinks about Eddie’s hand in his, and the way Bev’s voice sounds over the phone, and Mike’s smile when he talked about going to Florida, “what if we forget each other?”

  
Stan puts a hand on Richie’s knee, looks up at him from where they’re sitting on the floor. The credits are rolling, the room is dark. The screen makes their faces glow, and the Deadlights pop into his head, and he swallows hard. “We won’t,” Stan says, voice more sure than it has been in weeks, “and if we do, it won’t be for long.”

Richie lets himself nod, let himself take comfort in Stan’s words, in the hand in his, in the soft look on Ben and Bill and Mike’s faces, in the glow of the TV screen. “We won’t forget,” he whispers, and treats it like a promise.

  
“Love you, Rich,” Stan says, and grabs a pillow from the spot next to him, where Bev would sleep. He tangles himself in the blanket. “Sleep well.”

  
“Love you,” he says, and Eddie shifts beside him, his head lolling onto Richie’s shoulder. “Night.”

  
The finality of the words we won’t forget hang in the air, and Richie pretends to not know he can’t keep that promise. He wakes up with a crick in his neck, their hands still intertwined in his lap.

Mike starts to spend an awful lot of time in the library, and they start to follow him in there. _To make sure he eats_, they say to each other, but not to him, _to make sure he doesn’t go insane in there_. Eddie starts resting his legs in Richie’s lap, because he’s always been the bravest, because he’s the kid who shouted _they’re gazebos! They’re bullshit!_ And the kid who spilled his pills in the street and the kid who Richie is so utterly in love with it hurts.

  
He catches Eddie looking at him, sometimes, like he’s one of Stan’s bird puzzles, one of the harder ones that lay spread out on Stan’s bedroom floor. Bill sometimes looks between the two of them, but Stan’s the one he ends up telling, in the glow of the blue TV screen when the movie ends, when everyone else is asleep, because Stan looks like he knows and he just nodded, sitting there, unimpressed in the way adults get.

  
They sit out near the quarry, after school starts, when September feels hot and muggy. He drops his head into Eddie’s lap, because he knows he’ll bitch but won’t make him move.

  
“Your hair fucking itches.”

  
“Your face itches,” Richie says, like it makes any fucking sense at all, and Eddie rolls his eyes, but puts a hand in Richie’s hair anyway.  
He lets himself close his eyes, and feel the grass below him, and he can hear Bill jump into the quarry, Mike after him. Stan reads some book about birds, and Ben is making a daisy chain. Richie misses Bev so much it makes his teeth hurt.

  
She rarely ever picks up when they call her.

  
Richie wishes he didn’t know why, wishes he could go over to Portland and hug her and call her Molly Ringwald and smoke with her. 

  
Eddie is undoing the knots in his hair with his fingers, one by one, and it takes all the self control Richie has in his impulsive teenage boy body not to tell him that he thinks he’s beautiful.

The sun is heavy on him, and he’s nostalgic for a moment which hasn’t ended yet, a moment he's living. 

  
Then he hears a scream and Bill has climbed up and is trying to push Stan into the quarry and Ben places the daisy chain on Eddie’s head. Mike is giggling and Eddie rolls his eyes and laughs anyway, and Richie lets himself live in the moment, stops trying to memorize every second, lets himself get pulled into the quarry by Eddie.

  
The sewers feel far away.

He paints his nails black with his moms nail polish and goes to a _Cure_ concert in the spring of 1992 with Bev and the rest of them.“Friday I’m in Love” comes on, and he points to Eddie and mouths the lyrics, and Eddie rolls his eyes and grabs his hand and screams along.

  
“Just Like Heaven” plays and he sings every word with Eddie’s hand in his left and Bev’s hand in his right, and Stan is smiling at him, and Mike and Bill and Ben are jumping and screaming and it all feels impossible to get. They all stay at Bev’s, in Portland, after, and they sit in her room and all share a joint, except for Eddie, and Richie feels light and calm and a little sad, and they all perform an a cappella version of “Pictures of You”, out of tune and perfect and familiar.

  
He puts his legs in Bev’s lap and Eddie’s still holding his hand, and she looks between the two of them and rolls her eyes, smiling.

  
Her hair grew out, just past her ears now, and her eyes are less tired and sad, and he knows she can’t remember Pennywise, and he’s glad. She doesn’t deserve to remember that shit. She doesn’t deserve to remember her asshole dad, either, or Bowers or the blood on her bathroom walls. She deserves to be happy like this.

  
She looks at Ben like he’s the most precious thing in the world, and rests her head in his lap, and they all spread out on top of each other and sleep a good two hours that night.  
Richie wouldn’t trade them for the world, and when he wakes up with a massive headache and Eddie’s head on his chest, he misses them already.

  
Before he goes, he kisses Bev’s cheek and realizes he’s way taller than her now, and rests his chin on her red hair and thinks never leave me ever again, and gets in his moms car, humming “Pictures of You” loud enough she can hear it.

That summer, Bill gets a job at an ice cream shop, and they all agree that they should be doing the summer reading, but, hey, it’s free ice cream.

  
Stan insists on paying Bill (“the customer's always right, man.”), even though he shrugs and says “_it duh doesn't matter_,” and they all leave egregious tips on their free ice cream. Stan gets a job at the library, which he takes ridiculously seriously for a place that's empty 90% of the time, and yells at them to be quiet, to put the food away, to stop just _taking_ books, _Mike_, just because you work here doesn’t mean you can fucking _steal_.

  
“Y’know, Stan,” Richie says, sitting on the counter where Stan checks people out. He gets pushed off, and the lady in the corner glares at them. “I think you got this job just to bitch at us for being normal people. Mike doesn’t treat his job that seriously, dude, and he has a fucking library fetish.”

  
Mike glares at him, but says, “Stan, you know I love this place-” but stops when Richie points at him and mimes kissing the book.

  
“_Normal_ people,” Stan hisses, then turning to smile at a man who walked in, “don’t steal books and get cookie crumbs in the pages of Moby Dick.”

  
He glares at Mike (who got a job here a year before, but barely ever works, because no one ever fucking goes there) and Richie and Eddie. Ben laughs into his hand and Bill is sitting on the counter

(“You’re not pushing him off!”

  
“That’s because he’s not fucking eating in the no eating zone, asshole”).

  
“We’re here,” Richie says, and Eddie is leaning against his shoulder, “supporting you, and you have the absolute audacity to treat your well paying customers like this-”

  
Stan rounds on him with a very large book, and Richie shrieks and jumps away.

In 1995, they read _East of Eden_ in english, and he underlines huge chunks of text, and Eddie hasn’t stopped holding Richie’s hand, and Stan skipped a grade (he’s graduating with them now, and the rest of them copy off him and Richies math homework). Mike gives a bomb-ass presentation on Derry’s history, and Ben writes a poem that wins him an award and $200 and he gets published in a magazine.

  
Eddie sleeps over, most nights, and he still uses an inhaler, and is the best on Derry’s high school track team (Richie may be biased, but comes in with all the best times, and his face gets adorably red and he’s bubbly all day after a meet).

  
On Georgie’s would-be birthday, they all pile around Bill and hug him so tight none of them can breathe, and the horrors 6 years ago seem very close and very far, and when Richie calls Bev that night, she doesn’t pick up.

  
He reads _Good Omens_ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and dyes half of his hair pink (it comes out red and ugly) and paints his nails a different color every week. College is looming over him and he’s putting off applying, because the future is big and scary and he’s trained himself to never, ever think about it. He listens to the Smiths, and dubs them a “fucking bummer” but scribbles down their best lyrics on the knees of his jeans and on his wrist and Eddie always says something about ink poisoning, but holds his hand all the same.

(They’ve started kissing each others cheeks, to say goodbye, but they rarely do it with the other losers. The only other people besides them are Bev, who he hasn’t thought about in a long time, and his mom. But it’s different, and Richie isn’t complaining).

They don’t talk about it, until they do.

  
“Do you wanna, like, date? Like, boyfriends?” Richie says, out of the blue, as they play Super Mario Brothers. The kissing bridge seems very real, and he wonders if Eddie ever saw it, if he ever wondered if it meant anything. If he hoped it meant anything. Eddie’s silent, and dies in his video game, and just as Richie accepts that he’s ruined their friendship forever, Eddie looks at him and smiles, embarrassed but not saying no.

  
“I, uh,” Eddie says, and he flushes, and his tongue pokes out between his teeth. He tried to dye his hair black the summer before, but it just made his hair a darker, gross shade of brown and Richie thinks it’s so fucking cute, that Eddie is so fucking cute, but he bites his tongues. 

(He’s gotten good at that. He’s had to do it for 6 years).

  
“I thought we were already dating and you were just taking it slow, like really, really slow, which I would get because it’s Derry, and I just thought you were scared, and, like, I get that. And I didn't want to, like, pressure you into anything. That’s like, stupid of me, though, and I shouldn’t have assumed that without talking to you, that was stupid, I’m stupid, I’m sorry,” Eddie says, all in one breath, and Richie kisses him.

“I’ve literally,” Richie says, later, “been fucking in love with you since we were twelve.”  
Eddie looks at him like he’s a puzzle again, but there’s this soft, fond undertone, and Richie can almost convince himself that he’s going to remember this.

Stan’s the first to know.

  
They all know really, scarily quickly, though, and they tease them and Richie wants to tell Bev, but puts it off for a bit, and ends up forgetting.

  
He and Eddie apply for different colleges, but it’s okay, because they promise to keep in touch.

  
Richie knows they won’t, and spends every second with the losers that he can, because he loves them, and he tells them that.

  
Apparently, Eddie did see the _R + E._ He ruffled Richie’s hair and said, “Oh my fucking god, that’s adorable, holy shit,” and told the losers three hours later.

  
He applies to UCLA, and gets in, and Eddie applies to the University of Maine, because his mother is getting sicker and sicker and despite trying not to, he still loves his mom, and he gets in, too.

  
They cry and hug and Richie suggests Eddie fake his own death and come to California with him, and Eddie makes a sound that could either be a laugh or a sob.

”You should bring your mom, so she won’t miss me too much,” Richie says, and Eddie hugs him so tight he hopes his ribs cave in.

  
“I’m gonna kill you if you don’t call,” Eddie says into his neck, and Richie rubs his back, nodding. He thinks about the Cure concert and the hammock and playing truth or dare two weeks ago. He thinks of promising that he won’t forget at 14, he thinks about Stan and Mike and Bill and Ben and Bev, about the demon vomit on Eddie’s red t-shirt and the fight with Bill that summer. He thinks of the clown and the quarry and he hears Bev, sure as ever, _of course, Stan, don’t be so scared_. He thinks of the missing poster with his face on it, about Bowers, about the kissing bridge. His mind plays memories like a projector, _click_, the photo booth, _click_, the ritual, _click_, “do you want one from me, too, Mrs. K?”

  
He hopes, morbidly, the clown comes back just so they all will too.

  
Instead of saying all of this, he sighs into Eddie’s hair.

  
“I’ll keep it in mind, Eds.”

  
“Don’t do drugs.”

  
“The jury’s out on that one, babe.”

  
“Like, bad drugs.”

  
“Oh, yeah,” Richie says, trying to joke around, because if he cries he won’t be able to leave, ever. “I would never. Do I look like I would ever do anything bad? No. I am pure.”

  
“We should run away together,” Eddie says, and he’s not sure if it’s a joke.

  
“We should go to Canada and get a pomeranian.”

  
Eddie’s silent for a bit, and Richie thinks, blankly,_ I don’t care if I’m late_, and then Eddie whispers, “do you think It will come back?”

  
“I hope not,” Richie says, even though he’s lying, and thinks about the scar on their palms.

  
“Do you think we’ll really keep in touch?”

  
“We have to,” Richie says.

  
“I’m gonna miss you so fucking much,” Eddie says, and they kiss, and as Richie pulls out of the driveway, he can hardly see through the tears in his eyes. “Picture of You” plays on the radio, and he switches it off. He falls asleep during the plane ride there, and wakes up in California, heart heavy.

Richie wakes up, in his shitty dorm bed, most nights, from nightmares about clowns and a boy with a cast and a blood stained bathroom. He wants someone he doesn’t know the name of to hold him. _Eds, Eds, Eds_, his mind screams. (Who?)

  
He sits behind a boy with curly hair and sad eyes in one of his lectures, and instinctively asks him if he’s seen any new birds he thinks are cool, if he’s done anymore puzzles. He doesn’t know why he did it, but he doesn't really regret it, either.

  
He can’t listen to _the Cure_ without crying a little. He sums it up to their lyrics, but he thinks it might be because of someone in high school. It doesn’t really matter; he gets a job on the radio and he thinks, _oh, okay, I’m good at this_, and thinks maybe he could do this full time.

  
He sees a girl at a party with red hair and he hears,_ I want to run towards something, not away_, and the lights dance on her face and he resists the urge to ask her for a smoke. He thinks about Florida, sometimes, wonders if Mike ever got there, but then he realizes he doesn’t know who Mike is.

  
He sees Beverly Marsh in a magazine, and doesn’t know why he keeps it on his coffee table, doesn’t know why he feels this brotherly sense of pride. He doesn’t know why sewers spike this deep, primal fear in him, so he ignores them and walks faster. He doesn’t know why he hates Street Fighter.

  
He realizes, with weird, terrifying clarity, that he doesn’t know who he was before he came to LA, he doesn’t know his mom’s phone number. He remembers crying on the drive to the airport, remembers reading East of Eden in english, remembers jumping into a quarry. He forgets his own name when he wakes up sometimew.

His life isn’t _terrible_, at age 40, but it’s not amazing, either.

  
He’s pretty much an alcoholic, and he’s on tour, and he doesn’t fucking write his own material, but he’s not dead. He’s not suffering, just wading through everyday life and hoping he means something in the end. He starts playing Street Fighter, and can’t stop. He can’t look at Paul Bunyan without gagging a little.

  
He’s gay, but swallows and represses that fact for a bit, and then just flat out fucking ignores it for about 5 years.

  
He’s doing okay; he’s on his last stretch of the tour, he’s going to go home to his big, empty apartment, he’s going to sleep for a while and then rehearse someone else’s jokes into sounding like they were meant to come out of his own mouth. He's okay with that. He's trying to convince himself he's okay with that. 

  
And then Mike Hanlon calls.

He remembers everything, and vomits for the 2nd time that day in a truck stop bathroom. He remembers Pennywise and promising Stan he wouldn’t forget, and he remembers the concert and the kissing bridge and the ritual and Stan’s job at the library and the photobooth and snapping Eddie’s arm into place in that stupid fucking house.  
_Eddie_.

He remembers the clubhouse and the hammock and the demon vomit and _I know your secret, your dirty little secret_, and the projector and the bright red ‘v’ making losers into lovers, and he remembers Eddie saying, “do you think It will come back?”

  
It hits him, and it hits him, and it hits him, and he spends the whole flight back trying not to cry. The punches keep coming and coming and coming. 

  
He’s ready to fucking die in Derry, Maine, if it will mean seeing them again. He orders too much champagne on the flight, but can’t drink any of it. _Eds, Eds, Eds. That’s who he was._

  
He remembers Mike’s smile when he talked about Florida, Stan’s sad, tired eyes, the quarry and the barrens and Bowers. He remembers the reason he couldn’t play Street Fighter, and Georgie, and the flight attendant asks if he’s okay. He remembers the missing poster with his face on it, Greta Keene, he remembers Stan skipping a grade and Eddie thinking they were dating and they all _click, click, click_, and he arrives in Derry, Maine, ready to get fucking drunk.

  
He stares at the scar on his hand.

  
Eddie and him hug, tight and scared. Eddie whispers, “do you remember?” and Richie nods so hard his glasses nearly fall off his face, and he kisses Bev’s cheek, and he hugs Mike and Bill and Ben and he curses himself for forgetting.

  
Stan shows up late, with rumpled hair and bags under his eyes, and he hugs Richie, and they both sob in the Jade Orient, in fucking Derry, Maine, and Richie wants to stay with them, forever. “We promised,” Stan says, crying, “we fucking promised.”

  
They slip back into their routine pretty quickly into the dinner; Eddie and him bicker and Stan rolls his eyes and Mike has the same smile. Bev’s just as strong and sure and Ben is just as in love, and Bill can’t write endings for shit, and they all seem kind of fucking miserable in their old lives.

  
And it’s like they’re kids again, except Bill is married and Stan is married and Eddie is in the middle of a divorce, and Bev is going to get a divorce after they fight the clown, and Ben hasn’t written another poem.

  
Richie wishes they hadn't forgotten, wishes they could’ve been friends forever like they promised. He remembers the sad look in Stan’s eyes when he asked if they would be friends when they were older, remembers the glow of the TV screen on Stan’s face, remembers the library and Stan admits to him, quietly, that he was going to kill himself.  
But then he didn't, and Richie crushes him in another hug and hates himself for forgetting. He remembers the bar mitzvah speech, loving the Smiths, _East of Eden_. He remembers the fanny packs and the Hawaiian t-shirts and _oh, we all float here, Georgie. _

  
Him and Eddie hold hands under the table, and the fortune cookies break open with those fuckers inside, and Richie remembers they actually have to kill this fucking clown again, _deja vu_. Eddie sleeps in Richie’s room that night, which saved his fucking life, because Henry Bowers has to, like, find them, and Mike calls the police before he can kill any of them.

The sewers smell like shit, and Eddie is gripping onto his hand so hard it’s probably crushing his bones into dust (like the night on the couch, Richie thinks, when he promised to remember).  
The Deadlights are blinding, and he falls, and his head hurts, but he knows this part, and the clown fucking played itself, and he rolls them over and misses the claw by an inch. They bully it to death, which wouldn’t have been that hard to do 27 years ago, back when he was full of pubescent rage, and he kisses Eddie as the house crumbles behind them, standing in the offensive, bright, normal sunlight.

_Richie, Richie, I think I got it, man_. 

  
They jump into the quarry, and Richie cries and then laughs, because fuck, they made it out, and his glasses are cracked and everyone’s alive.

  
“So, uh,” Eddie turns to him, while Bev and Ben are kissing under water, and Stan and Mike and Ben are all laughing, on the border of hysterical. “Uh, so, like, I was wondering what you want to do from here.”

  
There’s the fact that Richie just had a mental breakdown on stage, and how he just remembered the love of his life, and how he would literally die for Eddie Kaspbrak, and how they probably all need a fuckton of therapy.

  
“Whatever, uh, whatever you want is what I want,” and, damn, if that isn’t cliche, but Eddie looks at him with a look that’s so sweet it makes his teeth hurt, and he realizes cliches are there for a reason.

  
“Do you want me to come to LA with you?” Eddie asks, soft, and when has Richie ever pretended to be able to say no to him?

  
“Yes,” Richie says, without blinking, “my apartment’s a mess.”

  
And, yeah, it'll take a bit, but they'll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> im @eddiedefensesquad on tumblr ! thank u 4 reading!!!


End file.
